Hi Chris, all,
> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-lod-request@w3.org
> [mailto:public-lod-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Chris Sizemore
> Sent: 04 April 2008 13:38
> To: public-lod@w3.org
> Cc: Michael Smethurst; Silver Oliver; pepper@ontopia.net
> Subject: RE: imdb as linked open data?
>
> all--
>
> so, i was correct in thinking that imdb is interesting to the
> LOD community.
Correct :)
> i agree that offering "what's a/the Sem Web business model?"
> is pretty important in order to get buy in... does anyone
> have any contacts in and around imdb?
I think there might be a Bristol connection here. Perhaps danbri can
help. Dan?
> ***************** forgive the following if it's controversial
> -- i'm honestly just trying to understand better ***********
Discussion is good. Bring it on!
> however, on a more philosophical note, i DON'T think imdb
> neccesarily needs to explicitly opt into the Web of Data in
> order for the world at large to find Sem Web value in that
> data... i suppose it would be very desirable for imdb to
> officially provide Open Data/rdf of their content, but i
> don't think that's the only way for the Sem Web to gain value
> from imdb...
>
> basically, my premise is this: imdb is on the Web of Docs,
> and that's good enough for the purpose of answering the
> question to be posed here -- http://www.okkam.org/IRSW2008/
> (the problem of identity and reference on the Semantic Web is
> perhaps the single most important issue for reaching a global
> scale. Initiatives like LinkedData, OntoWorld and the large
> number of proposals aiming at using popular URLs (e.g.
> Wikipedia's) as "canonical" URIs (especially for non
> informational resources) show that a solution to this issue
> is very urgent and very relevant.)
>
> at this point in my indoctrination to LOD (i'm a long time
> semweb fanboy, tho), i guess i disagree with: "From a SemWeb
> POV this [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/#thing
> <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/#thing> ] is pretty
> useless since the URI doesn't resolve to RDF data.
> Identifiers on the Web are only as good as the data they
> point to. IMDB URIs point to high-quality web pages, but not
> to data." -- clearly i understand the difference between
> "data" and "web page" here, but i don't agree that it's so
> black and white. i'd suggest: "Identifiers on the Web are
> only as good as the clarity of what they point to..." i don't
> think there has to be RDF at the other end to make a URI
> useful, in many cases...
Chris, yes, I agree; been pondering this myself and for once I don't
agree with Richard; it's not so black and white. I was aiming for
something along these lines with URIs for Email Users:
<http://simile.mit.edu/mail/ReadMsg?listId=14&msgId=15205>
> at this point, for example at the BBC, my view is that
> identifiers and equivalency relationships are more important
> than RDF... just barely more important, granted... having a
> common set of identifiers, like navigable stars in the sky
> over an ocean, is what we need most now, in order to help us
> aggregate content across the org, and also link it up to
> useful stuff outside our walled garden.
The navigable stars analogy is a beautiful one.
> so, i'm one of those who feel that websites like imdb,
> wikipedia, and musicbrainz provide great identifiers for
> non-information resources even in their Web of Docs form. i
> know that most of you here will feel that this is lazy, too
> informal, and naive of me. but my argument is that, for sites
> like those i mention (not all websites, by any means) we may
> as well, for the purposes of our day to day use cases, use
> their URLs as if they were Sem Web URIs. on these sites, the
> distinction between resource and representation (concept and
> doc about concept) is not what's pertinent.
>
> i'm aware that most on this list will make a religious
> distinction between:
>
> http://dbpedia.org/resource/Madonna_%28entertainer%29
>
> and
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna_(entertainer)
>
> but i think that, by convention, and in the contexts they'd
> actually be used, we should treat them both as identifiers
> for the same concept, and that they are essentially sameAs's
> *in common practice"...
Hmmm...
> in other words, as much as i love dbPedia and think it's a
> brilliant step forward, i personally was fine with WIkipedia
> URLs as identifiers. the incredible thing about dbpedia is
> the data mining to extract RDF, not the URIs or content negotiation.
>
> i KNOW that, technically, what i'm saying breaks all our
> rules -- and i followed
> http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/httpRange-14/2007-05-31/HttpRan
> ge-14.html closely -- but philosophically i think there's
> something to what i'm saying... if the Web is easy and the
> Sem Web hard, must we insist on perfection? must we insist
> that imdb agree with us and explicitly opt in?
Perhaps the Web was hard in the early days as well though, we've just
forgotten? I'm not sure the Semantic Web is hard; we've just got to be
clear about how we communicate it to people.
> practically, tho, in an "official" LOD grammar sense, this
> works just fine for me:
>
> <http://dbpedia.org/resource/Madonna_%28entertainer%29
> <http://dbpedia.org/resource/Madonna_%28entertainer%29> >
> foaf:isPrimaryTopicOf <http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000187/
> <http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000187/> >
>
> <http://dbpedia.org/resource/Madonna_%28entertainer%29
> <http://dbpedia.org/resource/Madonna_%28entertainer%29> >
> foaf:isPrimaryTopicOf
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna_(entertainer
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna_(entertainer> )
>
> that seems useful and easy. to me, that's allowing a
> "sameAs"-like relationship between Web of Docs URLs and
> SemWeb URIs... i could really really run with that approach...
>
> but now, to stir things up a bit...
>
> given the above, thus:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna_(entertainer
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna_(entertainer> )
> owl:sameAs <http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000187/
> <http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000187/> >
>
>
> right? right? ;-)
No way. No way at all :D
Cheers,
Tom.